At the start of every term a certain Professor became the bane of our lives. He taught a course that all in-coming students had to take. The title of it was something like "World Cultures to 1500 AD". You can imagine what would have to be covered in 12 weeks. It was an insane course but the Prof was much, much more insane.
He gave an assignment of 50 questions and demanded that his students come to our Library to research the assignment. The students had to attach their Museum admission receipts to their papers. The problem was that many of the questions were not answerable. At the least, they were ambiguous. Here are some of the questions. They are taken directly from the assignment. My commernts are enclosed in square brackets.
1) Where does the Occident begin and end? Using your atlas, give exact co-ordinates. [Say whaaah?]
2) Which came first -- the mummy or the coffin? [See my comment above]
3) Describe Sacral Kingship. What does it entail? [Our Library has about 5 feet of books devoted to sacral kingship aroound the world. How can a first-year College student distill this into 3 paragraphs?]
4) Name nine civilizations that co-existed with Ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley. [You got us there, Prof. None of our Curators know about them.]
5) On the first floor of the X Museum there is an exhibit of paintings. From what time period do these paintings come? [This question appeared on the assignment for 5 years. The show was a nice little jewel box of early Italian painting. It ran for 6 months.]
6) Yoruba religion -- What is its tenets and practices? Do not put forward the vile rumors. I want only the facts! [ Oooh, vile rumors about the Yoruba. That certainly would be much more interesting than the latest celebrity gossip , wouldn't it?]
We can't fault the students. Many of them knew that they were being wrongly served by this Prof. We tried to give them the best information we could but some days, we'd get hit with 15 people a day trying to do this assignment. With only 2 people working the library it was impossible to help these students complete an impossible assignment. Something had to be done.
The Prof. refused to talk to the Museum but the College was more amenable. A student allowed us to make a photocopy of the assignment. After the beginning of his 6th year, the Prof was turfed out and we never had to deal with him and that awful assignment again.
He gave an assignment of 50 questions and demanded that his students come to our Library to research the assignment. The students had to attach their Museum admission receipts to their papers. The problem was that many of the questions were not answerable. At the least, they were ambiguous. Here are some of the questions. They are taken directly from the assignment. My commernts are enclosed in square brackets.
1) Where does the Occident begin and end? Using your atlas, give exact co-ordinates. [Say whaaah?]
2) Which came first -- the mummy or the coffin? [See my comment above]
3) Describe Sacral Kingship. What does it entail? [Our Library has about 5 feet of books devoted to sacral kingship aroound the world. How can a first-year College student distill this into 3 paragraphs?]
4) Name nine civilizations that co-existed with Ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley. [You got us there, Prof. None of our Curators know about them.]
5) On the first floor of the X Museum there is an exhibit of paintings. From what time period do these paintings come? [This question appeared on the assignment for 5 years. The show was a nice little jewel box of early Italian painting. It ran for 6 months.]
6) Yoruba religion -- What is its tenets and practices? Do not put forward the vile rumors. I want only the facts! [ Oooh, vile rumors about the Yoruba. That certainly would be much more interesting than the latest celebrity gossip , wouldn't it?]
We can't fault the students. Many of them knew that they were being wrongly served by this Prof. We tried to give them the best information we could but some days, we'd get hit with 15 people a day trying to do this assignment. With only 2 people working the library it was impossible to help these students complete an impossible assignment. Something had to be done.
The Prof. refused to talk to the Museum but the College was more amenable. A student allowed us to make a photocopy of the assignment. After the beginning of his 6th year, the Prof was turfed out and we never had to deal with him and that awful assignment again.
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